• lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems
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      5 days ago

      “California is, I believe, the only state to give health insurance to people who come into the country illegally,” Kauffman said nervously. “I think we probably should not be providing that.”

      “So you’d rather everyone just be sick, and get everyone else sick?” another reporter asked.

      “That’s not what I’m saying,” said Kauffman.

      “Isn’t that effectively what happens?” the reporter countered. “They don’t have access to health care and they just have to get sick, right?”

      Kauffman contemplated that one for a moment. “Then they have to just get sick,” he said. “I mean, it’s unfortunate, but I think that it’s sort of impossible to have both liberal immigration laws and generous government benefits.”

      Do I need to comment on this one?

      • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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        4 days ago

        one thing that’s so funny to me about this is that of course you’re not supposed to say “we’re going to brutalize poor people so billionaires don’t have to pay more tax.” you’re supposed to say a rising tide lifts all boats, that kind of thing, and in fact there’s a pic in the article where he’s holding a sign about how a bigger pie means bigger slices or something to that effect. but as soon as he opens his mouth he just throws “we’re going to take the healthcare” out there, because he has no self awareness, no critical thinking, no understanding of what in fact he is trying to do

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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          3 days ago

          This passage from the above-linked lw post from the “stone age billionaire” guy about how counter-protestors tried to prevent them from speaking is really telling:

          Then my friend Ben realized that this is a giant game of “I’m not touching you” for adults. Which is the stupidest dang thing IMO, but is pretty symetrical. A few of us just stood close together in a line, and we moved the speeches to the other side of that line. The counter-protestors would have to walk through us to block that speech, and we just didn’t move. When they tried to go around us we shifted to be in front of them. And they couldn’t actually touch us because that was against the rules, so this worked?

          I thought we all understood at this point that baiting your enemies into violence was one of the operating principles behind a lot of protests like this. Maybe not as a primary goal (unless you’re the Westboro Bastard Church trying to get ammunition for lawsuits against the host city for failing to adequately protect you from the consequences of your own actions) but historically speaking violent repression isn’t exactly a failure state for these events. One of the biggest victories for civil disobedience was putting the violent absurdity of segregation on full display by getting massive crackdowns on them for sitting in a restaurant, for example. Making the implicit violence of injustice explicit changes the emotional valence and makes it harder for John Q Public to justify actively supporting it. If you don’t have enough mass support to implicitly threaten to do something (i.e. look at all these people who will cause problems if not recognized) then arguably being repressed is an even more significant goal because showing that “about two-dozen kooks believe something” isn’t exactly going to mobilize social change on its own and it’s not like billionaires care about solidarity with the hoi polloi.

          But considering the absolute bafflement on display about counterprotests being willing to rudely inconvenience them it really feels like they understood that sometimes people who believe things will do this thing called a “protest” where they get together and chant slogans and wave signs and have a grand old time, but had no coherent idea of why and never really thought to ask.

          • maol@awful.systems
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            3 days ago

            The problem for them is that the cops are actually the army of the rich and state and national government is controlled by billionaire lickers. They could go to DSA meetings and picket, but at best they could get a DSA member to be rude to them and then complain about it.

      • ebu@awful.systems
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        5 days ago

        i can’t believe the media is straw manning me. but actually now that you’ve said the horrible things i don’t wanna say out loud that sounds good actually, let’s do that